Citizens or Papists?: The Politics of Anti-Catholicism in New York, 1685-1821

Chapter 1: ‘‘The Hand of Popery in this Hellish Conspiracy’’: The Legacy of Anti-Catholicism in Colonial New York

c ha pt er 1 ‘‘The Hand of Popery in this Hellish Conspiracy’’ The Legacy of Anti-Catholicism in Colonial New York After the departure of Catholic officials in the wake of Leisler’s Rebellion , the small Catholic population that lived in the province was scattered and unorganized. Fear of Catholicism, in the context of England ’s rivalry with France and Spain, remained part of New York’s political culture. During a span of twenty years in the middle of the eighteenth century, Catholicism once again became directly linked to England’s rivals for empire in ways that posed a direct threat to New York. Catholicism as a religion continued to be outlawed in the province through the first three quarters of the eighteenth century. Although Catholics who entered New York could not become naturalized subjects, some did live in the province as laborers and slaves. Early in the eighteenth century, Catholic freeborn subjects of Spain were captured by privateers along the Atlantic seaboard and sold into slavery in New York. Authorities believed some of them to be the leaders of a 1712 slave uprising in New York City that left several whites dead. A group of slaves deliberately set a fire, waited in hiding, and then killed some of the residents of the city who came to extinguish the flames. In response, the New York government enacted a law in 1713 that naturalized all foreign-born Protestants living in 19 20 Citizens or Papists? the province. Under its provisions, all those who became naturalized subjects of New York were required to take the Test Act, in which they abjured any allegiance to the Roman Catholic Church. There is scattered evidence suggesting that at least a few enslaved New Yorkers continued to identify with Catholicism despite the prevailing circumstances . When Alexander Saxton ran away in 1733, his owner described him as one who ‘‘professeth himself to be a Roman Catholic ’’ who wore clothes marked by a ‘‘cross on the left breast.’’1 the 1741 slav e con spir acy As they had during the turmoil surrounding the Glorious Revolution , New Yorkers in the middle of the eighteenth century associated violence and threats to the public order with Catholicism. In 1741, the threat became perhaps even more terrifying because Catholics, both lay and clergy, had appeared to have inspired slaves to rebel. The Protestant reaction in the 1680s against Catholics stemmed from their positions of prominence in the colony. After half a century of officially suppressing Catholicism, New York officials now saw a very different type of Catholic threat, one that emanated not from the governor’s chair and the fort, but rather from New York’s murky world of dank basements and grogshops, where poor whites, Irish soldiers, and enslaved Africans could meet away from the watchful eyes of the authorities. As Jacob Leisler himself had said as his regime was collapsing, there had been fears in New York of a possible alliance between African-Americans and Catholics, two groups on the margins of society with little apparent reason to uphold the established order. An even stronger parallel between 1689 and 1741 was that New York Protestants continued to link Catholicism with a foreign enemy; in this case, it was Spain. Colonial New York City was, in many ways, an unstable place in the 1740s. Between a fifth and a sixth of its population were enslaved people of African and other ancestries. Irish Catholics, whose loyalty ‘‘The Hand of Popery in this Hellish Conspiracy’’ 21 to the crown New York authorities had good reason to doubt, served as soldiers in the city’s garrison. Catholic missionaries were believed to be hiding on the province’s frontiers, encouraging the Iroquois to make war on New York. New Yorkers were particularly uneasy in the winter of 1740–41. The weather that season was unusually harsh, there were fears of a slave revolt such as that which shook South Carolina in 1739, and rumors of an invasion by the Spanish were circulating as well. New York authorities received word from Governor James Oglethorpe of Georgia that the Spanish had secretly deployed priests to the principal cities of British North America to direct plots aimed at burning those places to the ground. The province ’s officials were acutely conscious of their location as a ‘‘frontier province,’’ one that made them particularly vulnerable to attack from England’s enemies...